CD burner write speed and cdrecord

[Joel Hammer]

I am getting set to finally burn some cd's.  I have a 48 speed CD-R
drive. I have only a vague idea what that means.

Here is a section of the man cdrecord regarding speed of writing:

======man cdrecord on speed========
speed = # Set the speed factor of the writing process to #. # is an
integer, representing a multiple of the audio speed. This is about 150
KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172 KB/s for CD-Audio. If no speed option is
present, cdrecord will try to get the speed value from the CDR_SPEED
environment. If your drive has problems with speed=2 or speed=4, you
should try speed=0.
=====end man cdrecord on speed=======

I would appreciate and English translation and some suggestions for
setting the speed parameter. If I understand this this means I can set
the speed of writing to 48. When I crank up the speed, either to 40 or
50, cdrecord says it is writing at speed = 32.

Does the type of disk (mfg or type) influence the top writing speed?

I have an 800megahertz Athlon processor.

Any insight appreciated,

Joel